Keith Allen remembers writing The Yob with Danny Peacock in 1988
at the start
of his career.

Here I am, fag in one hand, a beer on the table, in Danny Peacock’s flat in Finchley, north London. We were probably writing The Yob, our film for the TV series The Comic Strip Presents… I’d seen the film The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum and I had an idea to do a parody of it. Danny was very attached to the idea of the artist in his garret, and decorated his flat as such. We got on brilliantly because we were very similar – except that I was bone idle and he wasn’t, and he wanted to be a writer and I was more interested in performing. We had a brilliant writing partnership, until it came to a point, quite far along in the creative process, when we realised that both of us had assumed we were the lead character, and both of us were writing it for ourselves. In the end, as I pointed out, it was my idea and I should play him.

I started out in comedy gigging and scraping a living together, and eventually worked up to doing shows at the Comedy Store in London in 1979. That led on to me presenting a show in the early days of Channel 4 called Whatever You Want, which had live music and sketches. I wrote a sketch called The Bullshitters, which was a parody of The Professionals. I phoned Peter Richardson, who founded the Comic Strip [a collective of comedians including Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders], and asked him if he wanted to be in it with me, which he did. In return he asked if I wanted to write some stuff for the Comic Strip.

I am certain things to certain generations. Lots of people remember me from the Comic Strip, there was the Vindaloo song for the 1998 World Cup, then it was playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in the BBC’s Robin Hood. My latest exposure is being Lily Allen’s dad – and Alfie Allen’s dad now that he’s in Game of Thrones. It’s true that I stopped gigging, but I’ve never fully moved away from comedy – some people describe me as a comic actor. I’ve always been interested in comedy but I can’t stand what is happening now, this conveyor-belt, packaged, observational comedy. I find it all so boring. I would never pay to sit in an arena and listen to some guy be funny (or not) for two hours. So I think it’s the right time for what I’m doing at the moment, which is a revival of the Establishment, Peter Cook’s comedy club which was a reaction to the censorship of the time. He had plans to bring the Establishment back himself, but it didn’t happen. We’ve brought it back with the permission of his widow, Lin. We’ve even got plans to open a drinking club – we’re looking for premises now.